A punching bag was caught by the stench of a spilt mess. The blue cover had been soiled in the intense bout with an invisible opponent. Its outline etched his lids when shut. It mocked every mistake and movement made a half-second short. Punctuated by the wailing, lasting words of crows, pigeons, rats, and squirrels.
Sent to their death of a boy's volition for survival. When shut into that eternal darkness, unknowing if he would awake, they come at once ripping and tearing until he was justly made a pile of splinters. There in this mountain of trash stands HIM. Dare not to believe in a god but HE, HE is someone to believe in.
The faults he had witnessed before were not faults at all. Semblances of character scratched into a stone statue. Scars the same as them on his wrists. Made unequal but strived out of that inequality into a beyond that has yet to finish its relenting statuesque ideals.
Stuck in that room for weeks, the boy found an inner beast that existed similarly to the one HE conjured when needed. It snarled with viscous delight at the mention of its name. A rage unbound but still not tempered.
Since his discharge, the boy trained his body until his knuckles made purple splotches on the mat. There was no longer a future to wait for. He learned that day when he came across the cannibals that time was never on someone's side. As a response to this fact, he took to the slums searching for greater and greater opponents each day in order to beat them to the dirt.
A match reignited was what he became. Screams followed the tap of his toes in the boots trudging in the hypodermic needles, crashing on the rot of the undercity. Whether it was of the Villains he beat to near death, or an echo from Sam, none would shake his resolve.
For that's what they are, echoes.
The gym had gone pitch black as the last of the trainers left for the day leaving the boy alone to continue. The staff did not question an Evolved, especially one brought in under the supervision of HIM. The boy had a wrangler, and that wrangler could be punished accordingly. The boy was controlled, or so they thought.
Roaring like a mad lion, he beat the bone denser, the skin thicker, the strands broader.
'BOOM! BOOM! BANG! BOOM!'
'Too slow. Too slow.
Faster, must push faster.
It came at me stronger than this. Remember… hold that memory.'
'BOOM!'
The bag flew from its hook crashing into a steel rig carrying a multitude of hand weights. In a subsequent disaster, the weights thumped on the padded floor barely a scratch left by their weight. Surveying the bag, the boy saw that it was split down the center, white stuffing pushed its way out. Eerily similar to the guts of a bird squeezed by a hand.
The light was switched off and the gym locked for the day.
He needed to attend a party.
There was no way he would disappoint HIM.